The dispute between the United States and Iran over Iran's nuclear program predates the Iranian revolution, even though in the current situation the issue threatens to become a crisis of potentially catastrophic consequences for the Iranian people. American foreign policy elite are in agreement that the Islamic Republic's apparent drive to gain the capacity to make nuclear weapons runs counter to core U.S. interests in the Middle East region, but they are divided as to how they ought to meet the challenge. The Iranian authorities, on the other hand, sound unanimous in their determination to continue the country's nuclear program in accordance with the requirements of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The mainstream media coverage of the conflict focuses exclusively on Iran's presumed intention to make nuclear bombs, but the strategic and political questions involved in the matter are too complex to be reduced to a single factor. While the European Union is trying to resolve the problem through negotiations, it is not at all clear if Washington and Tehran are ready to make the kind of concessions that could result in a peaceful settlement of the dispute.
Following the 1979 revolution in Iran, Mansour Frahang served as an advisor to the Iranian foreign ministry and as ambassador to the United Nations. He resigned his ambassadorship in protest when his efforts to negotiate the release of the American hostages In Tehran failed. In the early months of the Iran-Iraq war, he worked with international mediators to settle the war. During this period, he wrote and spoke about the threat of religious extremists who had come to dominate the course of the Iranian revolution. In June 1981, following the violent suppression of political dissidents, he was forced to leave Iran. Since 1983 he has been teaching international relations and Middle Eastern politics at Bennington College in Vermont. He is the co-author of U.S. Press and Iran: Foreign Policy and the Journalism of Deference (Univ. of California, 1987) and the author of U.S. Imperialism: From the Spanish-American War to the Iranian Revolution (South End Press, 1981). Mansour Farhang's third book, A Theology in Power: Reflections on the Iranian Revolution, is near completion.
This lecture is part of the "Iran: Past and Present" program organized by the Persian Students Association at Stanford University.